Dr. Marchese explains that endometriosis is a difficult condition to diagnose since many other conditions need to be ruled out first.
Dr. Marchese:
Well endometriosis is difficult to diagnose because any time you have pain in the lower abdomen or the pelvic region you have to think about all the other things that could be causing that pain, and so you end up having to do a full work up of basically abdominal and pelvic pain.
You have to rule out over appendicitis, diverticulitis, which is a condition actually of the colon and the bowel, you have to rule out uterine fibroids or a burst ovarian cyst.
So there’s so many differential diagnoses that first the doctor first has to do a work up on and then often times, when all of those are negative, we come down to that it must be endometriosis, and the only true way to get a positive diagnosis of endometriosis is with a procedure called laparoscopic procedure where the doctor makes a little incision in the lower abdomen and puts a lens down there like a little camera and kind of looks around and they can actually visibly see endometriosis. Endometriosis does not show up very well on a pelvic ultrasound or an abdominal CAT scan so laparoscopic is the gold standard for diagnosing.
About Dr. Marianne Marchese, N.D., L.L.C.:
Dr. Marianne Marchese is a clinician, author, and educator. She graduated from Creighton University in 1990 with a B.S. in Occupational Therapy and specialized in neurological and orthopedic conditions while working at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Dr. Marchese received her Doctorate of Naturopathic Medicine from the National College of Naturopathic Medicine (NCNM) in Portland, Oregon in 2002. She completed a two-year postgraduate residency in Integrative Medicine and Women's Health and completed a six-month post-graduate training in Environmental Medicine.
Visit Dr. Marchese at her Website